This Illinois Cop Story Keeps Getting Wilder by the Day

When the body of Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was found September 1 with a fatal gunshot wound, he was almost immediately deemed a hero cop. The police officer, known in the small town of Fox Lake, Illinois, where he worked as "G.I. Joe," was an Army vet just months from retirement.He ran a youth program with his wife. Residents of Fox Lake put up yard signs celebrating him.

But we learned on Wednesday that Gliniewicz in fact shot himself, staging the suicide to look like a murder. The 30-year police veteran was embezzling money from the youth program to make mortgage payments, travel expenses, gym memberships and adult websites.

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And the story keeps getting weirder.

On Thursday, a detective told the Associated Press that in the months leading up to his suicide, Gliniewicz sought a hit man to kill the Fox Lake village manager. The manager, Anne Marrin, was apparently close to exposing him as a thief. She was auditing the police department, including the youth program Gliniewicz oversaw. The day before his death she pressed him to share inventory of his program's assets. The next day he killed himself.

Anne Marrin

AP

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According to the AP, Gliniewicz had sent a text message in April asking a woman to set up a meeting with a "high ranking gang member to put a hit on the village manager." A month later, he sent another message—why is this guy sending text messages talking about criminal behavior?—saying he considered "planting things" to frame Marrin. Investigators found small packages of cocaine in Gliniewicz's desk after his death. They believe he was planning to use the drugs to frame Marrin.

Now it looks like Marrin, a government bureaucrat, is actually the hero of this story.